The Chris Cuomo Project - AOC Is KILLING the Democratic Party Over Iran

Episode Date: June 26, 2025

Chris Cuomo argues that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is killing the Democratic Party by pushing to impeach Trump over his Iran bombing that actually led to a ceasefire. He contends that Democrats are making the same mistake as MAGA by embracing extremism, with AOC consistently taking the losing side of every "80-20" issue: from defunding police to being too comfortable with pro-Hamas sentiment, and now trying to impeach a president for protecting Americans from extreme Islamism. Cuomo warns that the real threat facing America isn't just from foreign terrorists but from homegrown extremists of all ideologies—from the healthcare CEO killer to embassy attackers—who've been radicalized to believe violence advances their political agenda. He argues Democrats need to reject AOC's performative politics and focus on the economic issues that matter to working people, like Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill," not chase impossible impeachments that make them look weak on national security.Plus, Dr. Kirk Elliott (Owner and Founder, Kirk Elliott Precious Metals) discusses how the GOP budget bill's debt implications could affect American households and investment strategies. Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday: https://linktr.ee/cuomoproject Join Chris Ad-Free On Substack: http://thechriscuomoproject.substack.com Support our sponsors: Go to KEPM.com/cuomo and take control of your future.Get smart. Get moving. Before the next shock hits. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For all the implications of what's happening with the regime in Iran and the Middle East, there are more implications for Democrats than for almost anyone else. And the danger for Democrats is so real because of one person that's about to decide the midterms and not in a good way. terms and not in a good way. I'm Chris Cuomo. Welcome to the Chris Cuomo Project. This is not going to be well met, but it has to be said. Now why am I saying something about the Democrats that's going to sound almost like an advocacy

position because if we are saddled with this bullshit two party system, you need both parties to be at their best. Because I don't believe in the two party system. I think you need more parties or you need all your primaries to be open because look, look at Congress, okay? Why do you have 95 plus percent reelection rate when you have 20% or so of trust and of

approval rating? How? How do you have 95 percent plus reelection when you don't have trust and you don't have approval? Parties. Base. That's why the primaries are everything. And that's why just pleasing the base is everything. That's why you have MAGA on the right. And now the Democrats in a state of desperation are going through their own populist poison period, their own MAGA. That's what's happening. And that's why the Democrats stand to be the most injured

by what's happening in the Middle East right now. And I'll explain why, but it comes down to one person who was a metaphor for the madness on the left, and it is AOC. Forget about the fact that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is all show no go, okay? As a member of Congress, she gets nothing done. She champions nothing that gets accomplished. She is constantly

just a naysayer and a hater of the other side. And that's fine if, if it's balanced by other people that are giving positive reasons and what you're for that makes sense to the majority. AOC is killing the Democratic Party on purpose. Okay. She is insistent on being the party of 20%, meaning taking the wrong side on every 80-20 issue. Okay. Like what? Well, if we go back just a little bit,

defunding the police, okay, 80-20 issue, 80% of the people want cops, okay? She goes with the 20. Pro-Hamas and being way too comforting, and that is the issue of the moment, okay? And of course you have excusing what's happening on campus. Of course you have being anti-Zionist on top of it. But this is now a twofer for AOC.

And her whole cabal, not just the squad, there is a MAGA fringe within the Democratic Party that is having the same effect that it did on the right. It's this hyper-aggressive new base of angry, of grievance hyper aggressive, a new base of angry, of grievance, without any direction or any sense of improvement of what will make things better. They're just pissed, they're angry. And that's a real thing in politics.

Demagoguery is a big thing because it's easy to play to prejudice and outrage. And you have people on the left, including AOC, who believe that making people angry is the way to win because they believe that's what beat them. But she's wrong. It's that people were pissed off because they were on the 80s side of the 80-20s. She thinks she's going to get people just as angry on the 20s side of the 80-20s and still win, but you won't because you'll never access the majority. See? So even though you want the fervor of the fringe, ultimately it's got

to redound to the benefit of the many. Otherwise it doesn't work. See, that's what got Trump over. Immigration wound up being an 80-20. Who's on the 20 side? AOC. Let them all in. Um, 80-20 is what? We're not pro-Hamas. We're not pro-terror organization. Who is? AOC. Now, pro-Hamas, no. Not overtly, but it's about the signaling. It's about what you push back on and how. That's what the defund the police thing was. On the other side of 80-20, trans kids in sports, 80-20.

But now, we are about to have the 80-20 of all 80-20s. And AOC is intent on being on the wrong side and she's gonna drag her party down with her. And it is the impeach Trump movement for bombing the regime's uranium enrichment sites in Iran. Now forget about the fact that impeachment is a 100% non-event. 100% chance that it doesn't happen, okay?

So just on that, you know, when I say she's all show no go, quid pro demonstrado, as this demonstrates, you know you have zero chance of getting this done. Oh, but I'm fighting the right fight. No, you're not. 80% of the American people are against the regime, against it for its oppression of the Iranian people, of the Persian people, and against it

because it is the head of the snake of what threatens us most. And you are on the wrong side once again. And Democrats need to realize this and reject it. Globalize the Intifada should not be a democratic slogan. Okay? Not a good look.

Because this is the signature issue, the culture issue that is going to resound in the midterms. Now you're gonna have a huge economic issue. And by the way, by choosing this impeach Trump thing, you know who her allies are? The pod bros. That's who agrees with her about this. And just like AOC, they are pathologically drawn

to provocation for profit. Let's keep it alliterative. They are pathologically drawn to provocation for profit. And so is she, but she is a member of Congress, not a guy just looking to get paid online. And the Podbros can do that, because they have nowhere to go. They're going to have to go back to MAGA.

They were nothing without him, and they're going to be nothing after him. So this is their moment. So they can pretend to be angry because they're isolationists and they don't like they did this. But here's the problem for all of them, AOC and her misfit toy friends.

It worked. Was I in favor of bombing Iran? I said, it's not my call to make, but it's my call to judge. And I thought waiting was not weakness. Time was on our side. Look for another way. Look for the regime, at least to send a message to the world that they had an opportunity to do this the right way and they rejected it.

And then he bombed. But then what happened? Iran did this bullshit retaliation for now and said, we'll go with the ceasefire. That means what Trump did worked. That means Trump won. Did he get rid of the enriched uranium? I don't know. That was supposed to be the goal.

Is this about regime change? I hope not because I don't think we can pull it off. And Trump suggested it, but the administration has said, no, it's not about that. So if he doesn't win on uranium, if he doesn't win on regime change, then how can I call it a win? Because there went to being a ceasefire. And that's politics. But he didn't mean it that way. He'll say he did now. It doesn't matter. And attacking him for this and saying he should be impeached is killing the Democratic Party. Why? Because even though there is a case to be made that this was not legal for him to unilaterally do this,

the problem is the people that bring that case is Congress and the leadership doesn't want to. They don't want to. Now people argue, no, this was fine because there was an imminent threat to America's interests and concerns, and it was limited, and therefore he doesn't go. And now they're saying the wall,

so that's okay with the War Powers Resolution, the 1973 law, or they'll say, oh, the War Powers Resolution is unconstitutional, which is what the Speaker of the House is saying right now, which is just another way of him saying, he doesn't wanna fight Trump. And Congress, red and blue, have just given power to presidents,

administration after administration. So for Democrats to now bitch about this when they wouldn't have bitched about it with Biden, when they didn't with Obama, Obama had to force their hand and say, hey, I'm not gonna bomb in Syria unless Congress says it's okay. And then they backed away

because they don't want to own it anymore after voting for the Iraq war and getting burned on the bullshit yellow cake stuff, the WMD stuff. So here we are in this moment where it seems like going after the regime, picking another fight, kicking another whore in its nest is fucking crazy, except for one thing. Except for one thing. And not what others are starting to talk about, which is Trump did it as a distraction from all of the domestic woes. I don't buy that. Is it a distraction? Absolutely. Nobody's talking tariffs.

Nobody's talking about anything except for that. Why? That's the key. Here's the thing. Even if it were a distraction, and I don't believe it is, but I don't believe by design it is, but even if it were, and I don't believe it is, but even if it were, is, but even if it were, and I don't believe it is, but even if it were, it's worthy. Because the number one national security threat, the unifying issue of right and left that will force us all to reasonable is what?

Something economic? Nope. No. One of the other known culture economic? Nope. No. One of the other known culture wars? No. No. The fear of extreme Islamism as terrorism.

And larger than that now, which we never had to deal with before, we now have a domestic, homegrown base of young males, very susceptible to being radicalized by all kinds of fundamentalism. The CEO of the healthcare company who was murdered, the Israeli Embassy, Boulder, Colorado, Minnesota. These are all different ideologies that were at play blowing up the IVF clinic. They were all different political philosophies, if you want to call that, ideologies. These people probably don't even like each other. And yet this collection of young men, each and all, came to the conclusion that violence was the way to advance their

political agenda. That is fundamentalism. That is extremism. And that is what we have made in our country with all of the anger on social media and all of the intentional division and all of the gotchas and all of the break it and all of the anger on social media and all of the intentional division and all of the gotchas and all of the break it and all of the disruption and all of the extreme thought and feeling and yes I blame the president and yes I blame the parties and yes I blame the media and yes I blame the social media pod bros and everybody we're all in it because we've all been doing what's easy which is pissing people off for profit. But what that has also done is made it okay to be pissed off and act on that.

And I'm not saying that someone has to say, go shoot somebody if you're... But that's what is happening. And that is the number one threat. And by going after Trump right now for what he did in Iran when you don't have Congress, you don't have the numbers, you may have a legal basis, but you're not sophisticated enough to make that case, all you're doing is showing you're on the wrong side of protecting your constituents from the number one national security threat. That's what AOC is doing. And look, we get the performative nature of it, right?

Trump says, you're a fucking idiot. And she claps back, you betrayed the American people. Now, here's the problem with that statement. Trump isn't the one who betrayed the American people, not when it comes to this operation in Iran. AOC is. AOC is betraying the American people because she's playing petty politics with impeachment, which can't happen, which arguably shouldn't happen, high crime or misdemeanor, what would it be? Treason, bribery, what, what, what? That he didn't follow the law?

Congress abdicated its power to president after president after president. You don't even have a good case. I think there is a case, but I don't think it's a great case. And I think politically it's a non-issue. It's never going to happen. You are the one who abandoned your constituents. You are the one who betrayed America One by picking the 20 of every 80-20 issue and showing

that you're not even close to being in touch with the majority in this country, but that you are openly socialistic in a capitalistic society, okay, that you are way too comforting to extremism on the Islamist radical spectrum. Way too comforting. Way too accommodating. And that is the signature issue. And if you are gonna find a second one, you're still betraying your constituents and you are not doing right by them.

One, they don't give a shit about impeaching Trump for something that worked, that helps keep at bay a terroristic organization that wants to kill them. Young Alexandra, you are missing. You are missing that this is gonna be the issue. Terror is back and you're on the wrong side of it again. Not only are you not gonna impeach,

not only are you picking the wrong side of the 80-20 culture issue of where to be when it comes to fighting extreme Islamism and not with some bullshit lip service. Of course I reject and I decry all radical Islamism and you know, no, no, but you're still there's a yeah, but there can't be. Yeah, but and that's what was wrong with your immigration stance. You let them all in.

You look at the numbers under Biden and some of them that came in were just arrested as Iranian bad guys coming into the country the way you allowed to happen. And that's why that issue beat you. It's not just about hating migrants. Yes, that's the way Trump plays it. Yes, that's the way MAGA responds to it. But that's cheap. There's a bigger significance that redounded with the majority, resonated with the majority. And it's that this is reckless. You were reckless with your border policies. And I don't believe in the great replacement theory

that you were looking for brown people to all be Democrats. I don't believe that. I think you understand your people too well to think that they're all gonna be Democrats. I don't believe that. I think you understand your people too well to think that they're all gonna be Democrats. I don't buy it. But you were still reckless and you have now fed into the phobia and into the reality of making us more vulnerable.

And now you wanna chase after the president who just had success in this regard. And you are betraying your constituents because you are choosing this fight to posture and to pose as a poser instead of doing the hard work of better ideas on the big, beautiful bill, which is obviously a misnomer. It's like calling a fat guy slim

because you don't have any better ideas. And your constituents are gonna be hurt by that bill. And all you can say is that. You can't have any better ideas. And your constituents are going to be hurt by that bill, and all you can say is that. You can't go deeper into it. You can't figure out how to scale Medicaid. You don't have better answers of what to do with taxation, of what to do with economic revitalization for the working class and how they can get trained up.

You just want free, free, free. You are the one betraying. You are the one hurting your party. And the Democrats are on one betraying. You are the one hurting your party. And the Democrats are on one fucking knee. And I do not think the MAGA road is the right road for you guys to go down. We need two robust parties as long as we're saddled with this bullshit system. AOC is killing her party. Democrats, wake up and reject that and return to what you're about.

Fighting for the working men and women, not by trying to impeach Trump for actually successfully getting the regime to walk into a ceasefire when they are the head of the snake of Islamist terror. That's the threat. That's what's coming for all of us. Don't you see it? Extremism, maybe not jihadis, maybe not Islamists extremists. Maybe not. Maybe it's those mangyonis.

Maybe it's the guy in Minnesota. Maybe it's the guy at the IVF clinic. It's extremists who feed on these fundamentalist tendencies, who are being radicalized online. Sleeper cells, yes, scary, but we don't need sleeper cells to get hurt. Our own are doing it. It doesn't have to be some, you know, kind of Hollywoodization of a guy who one day is making your sandwich at the corner grocery store and the next minute is like a Manchurian candidate who is programmed to destroy. I don't believe in that romanticism. I think it's about disaffection and outrage, and I think it's

real. And the Democrats are missing it by letting AOC lead them down this bullshit road of going after Trump again with the pod bros. Like they're going to stay allies? Are you crazy? They're not going to stay your allies. You got them for a moment. They're going back to MAGA. They're going back to Trump. It would happen even sooner if he came after them, but he's choosing to go after everybody else in the media except the pod bros. Which kind pisses me off by the way as one step of digression Yeah, he doesn't mention News Nation because we're fucking fair and I didn't get the Iran situation wrong I didn't get what's happening with the regime wrong. I don't confuse the regime with the Iranian people. I don't confuse that even if you're not right with

I don't confuse that even if you're not right with, you know, getting the enriched uranium, even if that regime stays in place, you realize the threat of extreme Islamism to the people in Iran and to us here. And that you fight it whenever you can. You kick it whenever you can. You put your foot on its neck whenever you can. Why? Because it's deadly and toxic and it's coming for us. Right and left, they want you both. You are all the great Satan. Okay? So that's the galvanizing cause and I keep saying this, the party that grabs onto that issue, not out of xenophobia, not to be anti-Islamic. That's not necessary. You just deal with the facts of terrorism, of fundamentalism, of extremism. That's the culture issue.

Look, reproductive rights to me is a real problem. And sending it back to the states, I think, is a mistake. I think you should have had a federal standard for a woman's integrity over their own body and the agency of the same. The reason it didn't work to overwhelm immigration was because women didn't universally, and I'm not mansplaining, it's in the data, okay? They didn't see it as an existential threat. Now, could you argue, but it was? Yeah, that argument didn't win. They saw other things as existential threats.

You know what else they see as an existential threat? Extreme Islamism and extremism as terror coming to kill people in their communities and maybe their own. That's an issue that knits together the majority. We are all concerned about the same thing and we have this collective history of living through it after 9-11. The problem now is that it's 9-11 plus Oklahoma City.

It is 9-11 plus Timothy McVeigh. We have a country of potential Timothy McVeigh's. Disaffected, not gonna have a life they wanted, believing the system, hearing constantly that the system sucks, the institutions suck, democracy sucks, the presidency sucks, Congress sucks, the media sucks, economy sucks, capitalism sucks, everything sucks.

Constant, here all the time, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And now they're acting on it. That's Luigi Mangione. That's all of these other actions. That's the common thread, and you are on the wrong side of it. And the Democrats have every reason to be on the right side of it, embracing diversity. We respect Muslims. We respect Jews. We respect Catholics.

We respect agnostics. We respect Protestants. We respect atheists. Because our national religion, in a secular society, which is what we fucking are, we are secular. America is secular, right? Our national religion is law and order, and extremism is the enemy of that, because they want to destroy law and order. They want to destroy what we are. This is the issue my brothers and sisters and AOC is trying to take it away from the Democrats by chasing Trump over something she can't win and that she shouldn't win. This is the height of stupidity. And I said this with each of the impeachments. Why? The first one, I think you had your best potential case. It fell

short not just because of the dossier. But you were never going to have him removed. You never had the numbers. And it is a political act. It's not a trial, not really. It's votes. So if you were never going to do it, why would you put the country through it? Advantage. And it was wrong to do it. I said it then, I say it now. Could I have said it more then? Yeah. But I, like everybody else, believed it in real time that that's what you do. You take it as it comes. And these people with the 2020 hindsight of bullshit, it's just the same thing with COVID. See, I'm telling you about it right now because it's happening right now. AOC is killing the Democrats right now. You should be going after

the big, better, big, beautiful bill, whatever the fuck it is, how the tax cuts are for the wrong people in the wrong amounts at the wrong time, and that the things that are getting cut are being dealt with the wrong way. And there are better ideas and better ways that should be in that bill. That's where the Democrats should be. Instead, she wants to impeach Trump and they're quiet on the bill.

Where is the majority? They disapprove of the bill. Why aren't you talking about that? Because it's too hard. And impeach Trump and you betrayed America, Mr. Trump, is easy and that's what AOC is about. All show, no go. Doing what's easy. Support comes from Smalls. Breaking news. Cats don't care about breaking news. They

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Again, that's promo code CUOMO for an additional 50% off your first order. Again, that's promo code CUOMO for an additional 50% off your first order plus free shipping at Smalls.com. Now some of you who do your homework are going to say, hasn't Cuomo said before that he kind of respects AOC? I do. I do. I respect her personal industry. I respect the following she's built for herself on social media. But that doesn't mean that I respect how she did it. She's a propagandist, a poser. That's what she is. She has passed no meaningful legislation. She is in no real leadership roles. She is not respected. Now she'll say, great, I don't wanna be.

That's part of the problem. I don't wanna be liked by them. They all suck. That's it. Tear it down. Tear down your party leadership. Tear down the institutions. Tear it all down and then what the fuck are you left with?

What are you building that's better? Defund the police and replace it with what? Any jackass can kick down a barn. It takes a good man or woman or whatever you want to call yourself to build one. What the fuck are you building? Nothing. You are tearing down and it's at the wrong time and on the wrong thing. Democrats, you wanna go critical? You wanna go hard and heavy? Go at it on the bill, but with better ideas. Not just Trump sucks, that got you where you are,

in the fucking sewer. You wanna go all in on something? Go all in against extremism. Change how you speak, change how you deal. Change how you oppose. Show the right way to be. Be law and order. Get back to basics on immigration. Go after these things. Otherwise, like AOC, you are not a real one. You are not a real one when it comes to being a Democrat. No way. Running to impeach Trump when you know it's not going to happen, that is not what being a Democrat

is about. You fight the real fights. You fight the good fight. And if you want to say, yeah, that's against Trump, you lost. He kicked your ass. Why? Because of AOC. Because of stupid shit like transgender sports and real shit like immigration. You're out of touch with the majority. And when it comes to protecting this country from extreme Islamism, look, you can argue about the bombing. Congress allowed it to happen and it worked. Should it happen again? I don't think so. Why? It worked this time. Listen, it may have worked despite what we did

instead of because of what we did. I don't know. I don't know. I'm here to test those things. And I do think there's a legal argument to be made that Congress should own this, but they don't want to. Johnson just said that the law that really suggests they should own it

is unconstitutional, which I think is bullshit. It stood since 1973. The constitutionality has never been questioned. That's just his ducking it. He's no better than AOC, but he's in power, and the Democrats are looking to get back in power, and this is the midterms. Economic flux and uncertainty because of the tariffs that are not going to work out the way the president wanted. He is not going to get the deals set up in a way that energetically rebalances what's happening in the country in a way that he can own it. There's certainly going to be more on the downside than the upside economically.

So it's going to come down to something else. And what the other thing I believe is going to be is this, extremism. Who is trying to kill us? And you are on the 20 of the 80-20 because of AOC. Resistance is not going to get you on top. Insistence is going to get you on top. What you insist on matters. You have to insist on better for working people, better for the many, not the few. I don't know who she thinks she's pleasing with going after Trump for trying to protect us from the people who want us dead the most.

Look, the regime analysis is simple. Can the regime be allowed to have a nuclear weapon? No is the only American answer. Oh yeah, but they weren't anywhere close. I don't know that that's true. It's not what the IAEA says. Now, I'm not going with Bibi Netanyahu. I don't know that that's true. It's not what the IAEA says. Now I'm not going with BB-9 and Yahoo, I don't know. I know what the IAEA says. And there's only one reason to enrich it 60. It's to add the stepping stone to 90 and that's a weapon. They don't do the research. They don't have the submarines

that work on that kind of fuel. They're bullshit. They're trying to get it. That cannot be allowed. Oh yeah, but you don't bomb the... Okay, what's the better idea? What's the better idea? Crickets, okay?

Crickets. And that's why you can say, oh, he shouldn't, and he shouldn't, and the regime, this and that, and I'm against it, I'm against it. How do you keep them from having the nuke? Impeach Trump is the opposite of having a better idea. You're killing your party. You're killing your party.

And look, I hope it works out for you. I hope you guys splinter off and become, you know, whatever you really are, because you're not a capitalist and you're not a Democrat. And you know, you can say, well, what do you know? I was raised by a real one. I was raised by a real one. Go ahead and criticize Mario Cuomo.

What's going to be your biggest insult? That he spawned me and Andrew? Is that going to be the best you have? Because you ain't shit compared to him. Not in terms of intelligence, not in terms of success, not in terms of pedigree, not in terms of philosophy, not in terms of mission, not in terms of eloquence, not in terms of charisma, not in terms of anything.

Certainly not electability. You are killing your party because you are not a real one. Because you're doing what's good for you in a vacuum, with your little social media following you, no different than a pod bro. And you're killing your party. And Democrats better wake the fuck up and realize that you're better than this. Be with the 80, not the 20. Okay? Are there ever cases where you want to be with the 20 and not the 80?

Of course. Of course. Because in some instances, the 20 will become the 80. Sometimes it's wrong, like separate but equal. Sometimes it's wrong, like women shouldn't vote. But let me tell you when it's not wrong, that we should empower Islamist extremism. Now notice what I'm saying and what I'm not saying. Not about Islam, not about being a Muslim.

Islamism is already an extreme version of the faith, a perversion of it, Sharia law, and a perversion of that. Extreme Islamism is now a redoubling of that description. Okay? I'm talking about extremists, not simply Muslims. And you don't have to be Muslim to be an extremist. But we do have an unusually well-developed ethos of extreme Islamism. Okay? Look, I get why Obama didn't want to say Muslim terror,

Islam terror, Islamic terror. I get it. Because it is condemning an entire faith. I'm not doing that. I'm using a scalpel, okay? Not an ax. But there are a lot of these motherfuckers, okay? And they hate us.

And they want to do us dirty. And too many of our young people are susceptible and even sympathetic to these motherfuckers. And that's a problem. And you've got to be on the right side of that. And AOC is not. And the Democratic Party thinks it's going to ride the wave of outrage that yields to these pro-Hamas sympathies and globalize the intifada and all of these other crazy un-American ideas.

You're killing your party. There are plenty of concerns about what's happening with the regime, what the president did, what the president didn't do, how he did it. But when you get a ceasefire out of it, and there was no incredible wave of dead innocence, like what we saw in Gaza,

this is not the time to call for impeach the president. And especially when you have no chance of getting it done. When there are other things that you can get done that you can get done that you are ignoring for personal benefit and it's killing your party, it's disconnecting you guys from the many and banking on a really freaky few.

And that's a mistake. Let's just cut through the noise, okay? The economy is up and down. It depends on the day. Banks are having problems, all right? Producers are having problems, lenders are having problems. Inflation is eating away our savings. Gold and silver, check the numbers.

They've held value, not just through this current crisis, but every crisis. But you can't buy the wrong stuff. There's a lot of shiny stuff there that winds up being more gilded than gold. Okay? Shiny coins, high fees, low value. All right? Dr. Kirk Elliott is my partner for a reason. Real bullion, no games. Go to

KEPM.com slash Cuomo and get straight answers. No fee, no commitment. Just you and a skilled consultant who understands precious metals answering your questions. Protect what matters before the next shop hits. I didn't want to have to say this. I don't like getting involved in the party stuff except to condemn both of them because I think the culture itself is a disease. Remember, the party system is mere tradition.

The Supreme Court said that in the 1970s. It's not me. It's not an opinion. It's a fact. Okay? They're not creatures of law. They're not part of the constitution. They weren't in the Declaration of Independence

and not in the Articles of Confederation, except to avoid them. Okay? Just like Washington said, just like Teddy Roosevelt said, just like Monroe said, parties are the problem, not the solution. That's how I am about them.

But you need, if you're gonna have this system, you need both parties trying to do as much for as many as possible. And the Democrats are going down the wrong road and they're allowing the wrong people to lead them. The wrong one. Because AOC is not a real one. She is not a real Democrat. She's fighting

fringe fights for the few that do not resemble the majority in the ways that matter. Diversity is great. We do not need diversity of opinion when it comes to fight terrorism and to protect ourselves from the people who want to destroy what and who we are. And we sure as fuck don't need to help them. You have to focus on what means the most to the many, not just the few. And that's why the big beautiful bill, which again is a misnomer, is something that they should go hard and heavy on not impeaching Trump. And there's plenty there.

There's plenty to look at about how it's going to affect you and me, and our ability to take care of our families and their ability to prosper. That's why I have once again, because I can't depend on our leaders, so I've once again enlisted my partner, Dr. Kirk Elliott, to come on and talk about this bill, again enlisted my partner, Dr. Kirk Elliott, to come on and talk about this bill and what it could mean and what it won't mean and how we prepare ourselves, how we develop our perspective

and what we do to protect ourselves from what may be coming. Here's Dr. Kirk talking about what matters to the many, not the fringy few. Dr. Kirk, thank you once again for coming in to help the eggheads like me understand what the smart guys like you are talking about half the time because here we are in it once again, Doc. All this budget gobbledygook, right? And people are telling us two different things at once. Okay? This is good for you. We're going to cut your taxes and it's going to

generate all this revenue and everything's going to go down. And then the guys at the CBO, which we pay for with our tax dollars to look at this say, nah, nah, nah. They didn't cut spending enough. The tax cuts are going to lower revenue, and we're going to have even bigger borrowing problems. Now with that as the state of play, first question for you is, why do I care? As an American household guy with a job that is not government related, why do I care about what our debt and deficit is? I know what my share of it is, but I don't have any control over it, so why do I care? Well, you care because it's one of those things

that is going to be very detrimental to all payments that you're gonna make in the future, right? And so here's the reason why. Remember, few weeks ago when Moody's downgraded the credit of the United States, right? Why did they do that? What was their rationale? Well, it was, we have too much debt and the deficits, there's really no way to pay them back. Right? So what happens when that happens? So imagine that you were one of Michael Milken's clients.

It was like, he was selling you junk bonds. A junk bond is something where there's no way that this company is going to survive unless they get an immediate influx of cash. So you have to raise rates to entice the capital to come in. That's what a junk bond is. Versus like sovereign debt of the United States, which has been AAA status forever. Right? That's the blue chip of everything versus a junk

bond, which would be the bottom. So we're no longer the blue chip. We're now one grade less than that, which means to entice people to invest into U US treasuries, other countries, you've got to raise the rate because it's now worse. And the more that the deficits increase, the more that the debt increases without increasing jobs in America, without increasing people's income so wages can keep up with inflation, the propensity to pay off our debt and deficits is going to keep decreasing and decreasing and decreasing, which means our rates are going to have to go up.

And therefore you've got credit card debt, you've got home equity lines of credit, you're buying a car, any kind of payments that you're ultimately going to make are going to be faced with a higher interest rate. This is why something that you don't think is really related to you, like the Japanese bond market collapse or a US bond crisis, or the debt or deficits of the United States are ultimately going to have a direct reflection

on your personal life. So you don't control it, but it controls you because so many of us are credit heavy, a uniquely American problem, uniquely American opportunity also, right? Because nobody can get the kind of retail credit that we get in this country. But so many of us are dependent on it

and now the rates are gonna float. And when rates go up, they'll go up for everything. So that means my credit card, that means my ability to get a car payment. And does that also trickle into fees and rates that I pay, like for insurance? It'll actually trickle into all of that. So when Trump and Jerome Powell are battling each, right?

Like we're seeing on the news every single day. And it's like, Powell, you're an idiot. You need to actually lower interest rates. And Powell says, no, president Trump, I've got to raise interest rates because we're our credit rating, right? What Moody's did and everything else. So they're battling at it. Right.

And so, so now it's become this political Weigmair, right? And so who's going to win? Who's going to win? But here's where, when Powell raises rates, for example, what rate is he raising? Right? He's raising the rate that banks get to borrow from the Fed. So that means it's going to trickle down to everything else. Now let's say that he lowered interest rates. And what's going to happen with mortgage rates, for example? They may or may not come down.

Because if you're JP Morgan Chase or Wells Fargo and you're lending out your money to somebody who, man, what's going to happen 30 years from now? If you're buying a house, Chris, and it's like, Wells Fargo is going to say, can Chris Cuomo, is he going to have a job 30 years from now? What is the economy going to look like 30 years from now? And we don't even know what it's going to look like tomorrow, quite honestly, that the rates of the fed don't actually matter too much. It's, it's what is the perception of the economist at the bank thinking we're

lending out our money at what rate do we want to lend it out at? Because if we're giving somebody $500,000 right now to buy a house and we're going to collect payments for 30 years. So if they don't think that the economy is going to be doing well, two years, five years, 10 years, 20 years from now, you're going to raise rates. This is why when you have debts and deficits at the federal level, at the government level, like what we've got, even if Powell starts to lower rates, you might not see lower mortgage rates because if the perception is the economy is going to get worse, and unfortunately, maybe the debt is

unsustainable, the deficits are unsustainable, maybe we're going to default, there's no way that we can make our payments, maybe we're going to get. There's no way that we can make our payments. Maybe we're gonna get another credit downgrade. Banks will actually raise rates, even though the Fed is lowering rates because they're dealing with private money. So, you know, those of us who are, I guess you say, fortunate enough

to be exposed to the markets, maybe it's through your employer, maybe it's yourself, maybe it's some state-guided college savings program, the 529s. We're all desperate to find the stock that's gonna blow up and change our realities, but also right now we're looking to not lose.

And then I'm looking at the price of gold, and I looked two minutes ago and it was at $1,200, and now it's at like $3,300 or whatever it is. And it's like if everything is so uncertain, why is gold going up? Two-part question. And why is there such a difference between gold and silver? Why is gold a thousand times more valuable than silver? Is it because it's more precious, like you can't find it? But why is gold going up so much if everything's so uncertain?

Well, so both gold and silver, they're tangible, they're real, right? It's not something that can be made up. For example, it takes a lot of capital, people, equipment, money, to get an ounce of gold out of the ground or an ounce of silver out of the ground. In stock terms, that would be like its book value, right? What it's actually worth, right? So there's a bottom line to if gold were to go below

a certain amount or silver, let's say below $20 an ounce, the miners are just not going to mine it anymore. It's like it costs us 20 bucks to get it out of the ground. Why would we mine it if it's 18? We're going to lose $2 for every ounce that comes out. Gold and silver never go to zero. It's impossible, right? Because it takes money to get it out of the ground. And it's like silver, for example, is needed for manufacturing. Gold is the perfect barometer against government distrust.

Right? So, so really, the more people distrust the government, the more people distrust banks, they start pulling out of, of things that are, were normal in the past. You know, I felt comfortable in the stock market. I felt comfortable in the bond market. My real estate is amazing. Right. But, but when things can go to zero, I got it. For example, a company, they could go bankrupt tomorrow in this economy and your stock value goes to zero.

Gold and silver can never go to zero. And it's like times of crisis. People flock to safety. I get it. I get the flight to safety thing. I just never understood why gold was that, but that makes sense. And it's funny, sometimes once you understand one thing,

you start to understand a number of things. So I get it now, and I therefore get why crypto is even more of a crazy gamble. Not blockchain technology, that I think is gonna have great application in our society, but that's why I see it's so fake and theoretical that it's completely based on whim because there's nothing but the whim. And even with all the security safeguards, let's even ignore that.

So that's why that goes down. And this is why KPM has done well. So now I want to get into the gold thing. I'm watching Gold Rush on TV and like if you were watching that, you could hear the narrative within the different episodes about how the value was going up and I still didn't buy it. But part of the reason that I didn't buy it was because I didn't know how. And because you see it as an insider's game, or as you know, what governments do, or banks do,

but that's why you've wound up becoming so successful, because you've given people access to find safety in something that's great in turbulent times, which President Trump is like the spirit animal of. I mean, every president has had turbulent times because you're going to have half the population that loves them and half the population that hates them. And we become a world that's so polarized where we stopped, we literally stopped looking at what we have in common with each other. And we started focusing on how we're different,

right? Where, where people of different religions, different, everything can always have something in common with each other. But when you're focused on the differences, things are going to be turbulent. They're going to be uncertain. You're never going to know what's going to happen. Like, okay, are we going to have tariffs tomorrow? Are we not? Are we going to have a credit downgrade or things going to get better? Is Russian Ukraine going to get worse or are they going to have peace? What about China and Taiwan?

I mean, you look at all of this stuff and we are so uncertain, so uncertain. So it's human nature, Chris, when people do invest in anything, they want to have certainty about the future. Right? Let's say you were investing in Meta stock, right? Or Alphabet or General Motors or you name the company, it doesn't matter. You say, okay, I love their product. I love their leadership.

The economy is going to grow and I want my retirement to look amazing down the road. So I'm going to invest in that company. Stocks, in particular, equity markets, love consistency of future expectations. Love it. It hates uncertainty. As soon as there's a bump in the road, it's human nature for people to say, I don't know what to expect. I'm not going to lose my retirement. So they pull out, they sit in cash, right? That's the norm. When things get turbulent and rocky, people or when they pull out of equities, bonds, everything else, they're by and large going

to tangible assets like gold and silver. So to me, and here's the thing, five years ago, if somebody would say, Kirk, I don't trust these markets, I'm just gonna sit on the sideline in cash, have a very defensive posture, my answer would have been great. That sounds like a reasonable plan. But when you've got banks that are so undercapitalized right now,

and we have to ask ourselves a simple question, why do banks fail? Why did Silicon Valley Bank fail? Why did First Republic fail? Because did Silicon Valley Bank fail? Why did First Republic fail? Because they have more withdrawals coming out than deposits going in. Simple as that. Right? So when the economy suffers like we are right now because of inflationary pressures and because of investments or malinvestments or things like that. I wouldn't sit in cash. I mean, the most recent report from FDIC said that commercial banks in America have so much

unrealized losses on the books that by the end of 2025, it'll be trillions of dollars of unrealized losses. It's like, okay, what's an unrealized loss? It's like an investment that they have, the asset that it's down, it's down, but they haven't sold it yet. So it's unrealized, but an unrealized loss at some point always becomes a realized loss

because they're gonna have to sell it. So imagine banks, trillions of dollars of unrealized losses in America right now. What's going to happen when they sell those? You're going to possibly see at a level of magnitude higher the Silicon Valley Bank, the Credit Suisse, the First Republics, except with even bigger banks, because debt is the Achilles heel of not just our country. It is the Achilles heel of not just our country, it's the Achilles heel of corporate America,

it's the Achilles heel of banks, especially when they have derivatives debt, leverage debt, things that people because of greed think, oh, I'm gonna go into an option here and I'm gonna get leverage on my return. Why would I just settle for a dollar for dollar return when I can maybe get a 20 to 1 return, but when it goes in the wrong direction,

we're looking at a global debt implosion, Chris, that because we've kicked the can down the road so long, I don't know if we can get out of it without a complete reset of things as we've known it. Pain, and Americans don't want pain. out of it without a complete reset of things as we've known it. Pain. And Americans don't want pain. And politicians don't want to be the source of pain. And obviously we have a president who is very sensitive to that. One last thing for you, Doc, and I appreciate you helping us understand this. And by the way, you just helped me understand and now I can explain something I never thought I'd be able to.

This buddy of mine was a big trader on Wall Street, says, oh, I'm worried, boy. The CDF, the credit default swaps, you know, the way they're trading. And I was like, I don't even know what this guy's talking about. I got to get Dr. Kirk on the phone. And now I understand that in basic language, we see in the market and in the bond market and the institutional side market, they are starting to trade on America as if we were Greece. Even though we're nowhere near the risk that Greece is,

the uncertainty is making people start to trade in ways that is putting pressure on us to increase the enticement for them to invest in us in the first place, and that's going to create this cycle you're talking about. Now, here's the last one. That is the two realities. So this report just comes out that says the next year is going to be a bad year for America

economically compared to all the other major economies. But the administration is telling us we're about to take off like a rocket ship. What do you think, forget about which one is right because who knows, but why would we have a bad year? We'll have a bad year if the bond market collapses. Right. So, so, and that's just one reason we'll have a bad year if, um, Trump can't bring job growth back to America. So here's where these two things are, are actually going on. I want to explain both of them.

Please help me. So in Japan, their bond market is collapsing, absolutely getting crushed, crucified. It's falling off a cliff. If you look at it. Why? Well, going back to the 1980s, actually, there's been Japan. This is the weird concept, but I want everybody to understand it, has been the global financing arm for the world. Japan has been. So they wanted money to come into Japan.

So what did they start to do? They offered 0% interest rates on the yen. Zero. So if you're another country, you can say, oh, I'm going to go buy the yen. It's zero. Take that. And let's say it's billions of dollars. And the same day invest that in U S treasuries or invest that in European treasuries where you're getting 3%. So that arbitrage you're borrowing at zero and you get 3% maybe risk free

return and Tom billions of dollars. That's massive. So that yen carry trade is what it's called, has been going on for decades. That has been the financing arm of the global economy for decades. Well, now, you can't print money without it ultimately impacting you because that creates inflation. So the inflation in Japan has gotten so much that now they have to raise interest rates. So they have, cause you raise interest rates to slow down inflation. So they raised rates,

the yield on the Japanese bonds is going up. So that means two things. Number one, the yen carry trade is over. So the financing arm of the global economic growth is done. Number two, who invests, and this is why this is going to impact America drastically, right? Who invests in bonds, pension funds, and insurance companies mostly? So when, let's take Japan for example. You've got insurance companies in Japan that are now selling the bonds because this is a concept called a duration gap.

They're owning 30 year treasuries, but what's the nature of an insurance company? Well, life insurance, somebody dies, you have to pay the beneficiaries. So that's really not going to last 30 years. So that difference is a duration gap. They're going to have to sell treasuries their bonds earlier than the 30 year maturity. And if interest rates are going up, they're selling the bonds at a lower amount every time somebody dies, and they have to sell a bond, they're losing money. Come over to America. Same thing is

happening. You look at the US bonds, 30 year treasuries, overlay that chart on top of Japan's, it looks almost exactly the same. Right? So interest rates in America are going to have to go up because Moody's downgraded us, because we have debt, because we have deficits. So what's going to happen to American insurance companies? Same thing, the duration gap, they're going to have to sell the bonds at lower prices.

And when they know or feel that interest rates are going to go up, they start accelerating the selling. This is going to kill the bond market. Right. So. So now let's look at the demographics of America. We're the great. It's a great America. Right. The baby boomers are the largest demographic. So you go way back. World War Two. Our brave soldiers went over fought in Europe. They came back. World War II, our brave soldiers went over, fought in Europe, they came back, they were really happy, and they had babies. Because that's what happens when you're

really happy, right? So those are the baby boomers. Now those baby boomers are retiring, and they're getting older, and they're dying. So insurance companies are going to have a lot of life insurance benefits to pay. They're going to have to sell the bonds to make that happen at lower prices because interest rates are going up. This is so much why Trump wants Powell to lower interest rates because without lowering interest rates, the economy is not going to be stimulated. In fact, I think we go into a recession. Right? So, this is the pickle that we're in right now.

So this bond market in Japan is going to impact the American market, which is going to impact all of our rates and could drive us into a recession. This is why I say over the next year, watch the bond market. If the bond market starts to fail, the economy's kind of toast. Right? So, so here's where the narrative of political ideologies kind of comes in. So Trump wanting to rest on tariff income, right? It's like, okay, let's let's

have other countries pay for our taxes. That's what tariffs do, right? So therefore we can cut expenses through Doge and we can do all this other stuff. And if we're cutting expenses and other countries are paying our bills, this is gonna be great. Now, in reality, this isn't really how it's playing out.

I mean, if that theory were to play out, it would be amazing. But you look at the big, beautiful bill. I don't see it as a big, beautiful bill. A lot of it I like, but some of it when it comes to debt and deficits, when I'm an economist, it's like, this is terrible. Right? This is awful because it becomes a big, horrible bill unless you can bring jobs back to America, grow the economy, get the people working, get the people spending,

then ultimately you could pay off the deficits and the debt. Without that, it actually makes matters worse. Why are guys with your kinds of education defaulting to a position that the tariffs are going to slow economic growth. They've dropped the projections from about 3% to a percent and a half. Why if the tariffs are supposed to bring more money in? So in the short and medium term, I think the tariffs are going to be worse for the economy.

But in the long run, you play it out. In theory, it could be very beneficial. But why in the short and medium term? Well, for decades, multiple presidential administrations going all the way back to Bush number one, right after Reagan, what was, and every president since, right, it's like, what did they do? When in a free trade world, in a globalist world,

you look at NAFTA, you look at all these things, it's like, hey, they're exporting jobs overseas to get cheap foreign goods, right? That's what they did. And we have to know one thing, jobs always follow manufacturing. So if the manufacturing is done in China, That's where the jobs go.

That's where the jobs are. If the manufacturing is done in Brazil, that's where the jobs are. If it's done in America, that's where the jobs are. So under a tariff program or foreign goods are more expensive, ultimately you would have, OK, let's bring the jobs back to America. It's going to be less expensive. People are going to buy American rather than foreign goods. And that makes sense, right?

The problem is for decades, jobs have been exported overseas. Why is the Rust Belt called the Rust Belt for crying out loud? Because the factories were shut down. You have to retool. You have to retrain the population. You have to get things updated. All of retrain the population, you have to get things updated, all of that. That's not going to happen overnight. So even if you have tariffs, we haven't brought the jobs back to America yet, it's going to take time to rebuild the factories to get them up to snuff. And so that's going to take at least a year. So in the short term,

we're not going to have the jobs back here. You're going to have higher prices from tariffs and it's going to look worse because the offset of creating more jobs hasn't happened yet. Now in time, sure, that will happen. Right. But it's going to take time. And do we have the fortitude as a country to get to the next chapter? I don't know because we're microwave generation. This is the political battle that we're seeing, right?

And so when you have turbulence, chaos, uncertainty, change, this is where people, human nature, like we talked about, going to pull back the reins. They're not going to invest as much because they don't know the certainty of the future. Normal equity bond markets are going to get hurt. And, but this is times when gold and silver absolutely thrive. They thrive during times of uncertainty. They thrive during times of inflation, which we've got, you've got inflation from tariffs. You've got inflation from, uh, printing of money. That's the root cause of all inflation, right? Takes more devalued dollars to buy a valuable good and service. So here's where

I think moving forward, the next year to two are going to be very turbulent, Chris, very turbulent. And I don't think there is an easy way out of it. I don't. But what I do know, being an economist, you can't add trillions of dollars of debt in a bill without bringing jobs back to America. And this is the battle at hand. If you do that and you bring jobs back to America and people are working, the offset is minimal.

It would be okay. If you don't bring the jobs back, which I don't see how you're gonna bring jobs back real quick until you bring the manufacturing back. And I think it's gonna be turbulent for a while. A big if, which is why people are looking for places and plays to be safe, which is how I realized I was missing precious metals,

and I'm now in a partnership with you so that other people don't make the same mistake and understand their options. But most of all, Dr. Kirk, thank you so much for helping take what seems like people are having a conversation in a different language and making it relatable to the choices and the decisions that we all have to make with our own households and our own investments. Thank you very much, Dr. Kirk.

Always a pleasure. It's my pleasure. It's my pleasure. My thanks as always to Dr. Kirk for upping the brain game here on the Chris Cuomo podcast and getting us focused on what really matters, not impeaching the president over something that actually worked. When you can't have the votes to get them out anyway, not globalize the intifada as the new outrage phrase to counter MAGA. That's not connecting with the majority.

This is what you need to focus on. If you're a Democrat, you really need to focus on it. If you're just an independent critical thinker, which is all you need to be, and you are smart enough to avoid the parties, you will benefit from understanding, as I did, what's coming in this bill and what I have to prepare for. Thank you for subscribing and following. Thank you for checking me out on NewsNation 8P and 11P every weekday night. My brothers and sisters, the challenges are real. If we decide to see what makes us connected as opposed to disconnected. We will get to a better place than we are in today.

Let's get after it.